This year’s competition was held at Birmingham Cathedral on Saturday, September 23rd at Birmingham Cathedral. The Leicester Diocesan Guild won the competition in 2022 so were determined to take part to, hopefully, retain the trophy.
Most of the band travelled to Birmingham by train, with Sally, Richard and Holly travelling by car. As well as the 12 ringers, we had some groupies (Richard, Kate and Kiera) and 2 mascots (Holly and Bonnie). The draw took place inside the cathedral, where there were plentiful supplies of hot drinks and cakes and a stand selling Ringing World merchandise. The Dean welcomed us to the cathedral and he then proceeded to pull the names of the bands out of a hat to decide the order of ringing. There were 7 teams and we were drawn 6th – plenty of time for the band to visit the nominated pub before ringing.
The competition bands all rang well, with the home team – Birmingham Cathedral – delivering a first rate performance – as can be heard in this video.
The results were as follows:
1st Birmingham Cathedral – 92 points
2nd Cambridge – 85 points
3rd Melbourne – 83 points
4th Society of Royal Cumberland Youths (Midlands) – 80 points
5th Scratch band – 75 points
6th Leicester DG – 72 points
7th Welsh Colleges – 68 points
Although we didn’t retain the trophy, we did produce some very good ringing. It just wasn’t as good as the 5 bands who rang better! It is worth noting that members of the LDG band also rang in the bands for Melbourne, SRCY (Midlands) and the scratch band so many members were tired (and well refreshed) by the time they rang for us!
Following the competition, we spent some quality time in the pub!
Sally Brown
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